Today’s Wiki-est, Amazonian Googlies5. Singer/actress Midler : BETTE
I am a huge, huge fan of Bette Midler. I love everything about the woman, her bawdy humor, her expansive personality, and of course her amazing voice. Midler will forever be associated with the 1979 film “The Rose”, loosely based on the life of the self-destructive singer, Janis Joplin, with Bette playing the lead. Bette Midler shows she can act in this movie, and boy does she show that she can sing. The title song was written by Amanda McBroom and became a huge hit for Midler in 1979.

14. Memo : NOTE
A memorandum is a “thing to be remembered” in Latin, from the verb “memorare” meaning “to call to mind”.

15. No turn may be allowed then, according to a sign : ON RED
If you’re sitting behind a car that doesn’t make a right on red, it may just be a rental car driven by someone from Europe. Speaking as someone who learned to drive over there, I must admit I held up a few people at red lights when I first visited this country. That’s because in Europe we aren’t allowed to make any move past a red light, unless there is an accompanying green arrow. So, if you’re driving over there, take care …

16. Lab assistant in a horror film : IGOR
Igor has been the assistant to Dracula, Frankenstein and Young Frankenstein among others. Igor is almost invariably portrayed as a hunchback.

20. Actor Thornton of “Sling Blade” : BILLY BOB
I’ve always thought that the actor Billy Bob Thornton really knows how to give an understated performance, and he does it really well. Thornton came to the public eye as actor and screenwriter for the 1996 movie “Slingblade”. He won an Academy Award for screenwriting for that film. Thornton has been married five times in all, most famously to the actress Angelina Jolie.

24. ___ fide : BONA
Bona fide(s), translates from the Latin as “in good faith”, and is used to indicate honest intentions. It can also mean that something is authentic, like a piece of art that is represented in good faith as being genuine.

25. Carlsbad feature : CAVERN
Carlsbad Caverns National Park is located in New Mexico. The “Big Room” chamber that is part of the network of caves, is the third largest underground chamber in the country. It is almost 4,000 feet long and over 600 feet wide.

28. Chesapeake Bay delicacy : BLUE CRAB
A live blue crab gets its color from pigments in the shell, which predominantly result in a blue color. When the crab is cooked all the pigments break down except for astaxanthin, a red pigment, which is why crab turns up at the dinner table looking very red.

Chesapeake Bay is on the Atlantic coast and is surrounded by the states of Maryland and Virginia. Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the whole country, with over 150 rivers and streams draining into it.

32. Beelike : APIAN
“Apis” is the Latin for “bee”.

34. Singer Yoko : ONO
Yoko Ono was born into a prosperous Japanese family, and is actually a descendant of one of the emperors of Japan. Her father moved around the world for work and she lived the first few years of her life in San Francisco. The family returned to Japan before moving on to New York, Hanoi and back to Japan just before WWII, in time to live through the great fire-bombing of Tokyo in 1945. Immediately after the war the family was far from prosperous. While Yoko’s father was being held in a prison camp in Vietnam, her mother had to resort to begging and bartering to feed her children. When her father was repatriated, life started to return to normal and Yoko was able to attend university. She was the first woman to be accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University.

35. Writer Ayn and others : RANDS
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist born Alisa Rosenbaum. Rand’s two best known works are her novels “The Fountainhead” published in 1943 and “Atlas Shrugged” in 1957. Back in 1951, Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City. Soon after, she gathered a group of admirers around her with whom she discussed philosophy and shared drafts of her magnum opus, “Atlas Shrugged”. This group called itself “The Collective”, and one of the founding members was none other than future Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan.

36. Naval rank: Abbr. : ENS
Ensign is the most junior rank of commissioned officer (usually) in the armed forces. The name comes from the tradition that the junior officer would be given the task of carrying the ensign flag.

45. Talked back to : SASSED
“Sass”, meaning “impudence”, is a back formation from the word “sassy”. “Sassy” is an alteration of the word “saucy”, with “sassy” first appearing in English in the 1830s.

46. Currier and ___ : IVES
Currier and Ives was a printmaking concern in New York City, run by Nathaniel Currier and his partner James Merritt Ives. The firm specialized in making affordable, hand-colored black and white lithographs.

48. Golden Delicious and others : APPLES
The first Golden Delicious tree was found in a pasture field on a farm in West Virginia in the late 1800s. There were no other apple trees growing nearby, so the farmer left it to grow. The fruit proved to be popular and the farmer sold the tree to a local nursery. The nursery named the apple Golden Delicious to go along with the existing line of Red Delicious apples, even though the two varieties trees aren’t very closely related. The Golden Delicious is now the official fruit of West Virginia.

51. Service provided at Meineke and Pep Boys : BRAKE JOB
Meineke Car Care Centers started out as a single-store venture between Sam Meineke and a partner in Houston, Texas in 1972. There are now about 900 Meineke franchises around the world.

The Pep Boys automotive stores started out in Philadelphia when four friends pooled their money ($800, in 1921) to open an auto parts store. The name “Pep” was taken from a Pep Valve grinding compound that they carried. They changed the name to Pep Boys as at least one local used to refer to the store as “the boys at Pep”. One of the friends cashed out of the business, and the remaining trio eventually rebranded the store as “The Pep Boys – Manny, Moe & Jack”.

58. Bygone Italian coins : LIRE
The name “lira” is used in a number of countries for currency. It comes from the Latin word for a pound and is derived from a British pound sterling, the value of a Troy pound of silver. The lira (plural “lire”) was the official currency of Italy before the country changed over to the euro.

60. Hawaiian strings, informally : UKES
The ukulele originated in the 1800s and mimicked a small guitar brought to the Hawaiian Islands by Portuguese immigrants.

62. Like some preppy jackets : TWEED
Tweed is a rough woolen fabric very much associated with Scotland in the UK, and County Donegal in Ireland. The cloth was originally called “tweel”, the Scots word for “twill”. Apparently a London merchant misinterpreted some handwriting in the early 1800s and assumed the fabric was called “tweed”, a reference to the Scottish River Tweed., and the name stuck …

Down2. Spelling of “90210” : TORI
Tori Spelling is an American actress who made a name for herself playing Donna Martin on television’s “Beverly Hills, 90210”. Tori is the daughter of film and television producer Aaron Spelling.

3. And others, for short : ET AL
Et alii (et al.) is the equivalent of et cetera (etc.), with et cetera being used in place of a list of objects, and et alii used for a list of names. In fact “et al.” can stand for et alii (for a group of males, or males and females), aliae (for a group of women) and et alia (for a group of neuter nouns, or for a group of people where the intent is to retain gender-neutrality).

5. Certain spool : BOBBIN
A bobbin is a cylinder around which wire, yarn, thread, film or perhaps ribbon is wound.

6. Company with a spectacular 2001 bankruptcy : ENRON
After all the trials following the exposure of fraud at Enron, several of the key players ended up in jail. Andrew Fastow was the Chief Financial Officer. He plea-bargained and received ten years without parole, and became the key witness in the trials of others. Even Fastow’s wife was involved, and was sentenced to one year for helping her husband hide money. Jeffrey Skilling (ex-CEO) was sentenced to 24 years and 4 months. Kenneth Lay (CEO) died in 2006 after he had been found guilty and before he could be sentenced. The accounting firm Arthur Andersen was found guilty of obstruction of justice for shredding thousands of pertinent documents and deleting emails and files (a decision that the Supreme Court later overturned on a technicality). But still, Arthur Andersen collapsed under the weight of the scandal and 85,000 people lost their jobs (despite only a handful being directly involved with Enron).

7. Chicago daily, briefly, with “the” : TRIB
The Chicago Tribune was first published in 1847. The most famous edition of the Trib was probably in 1948 when the headline was “DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN”, on the occasion of the presidential election. When it turned out Truman had actually won, the victor picked up the paper with the erroneous headline and posed for photographs with it … a famous, famous photo, that must have stuck in the craw of the editor at the time.

8. Koppel or Kennedy : TED
The broadcast journalist Ted Koppel is most associated with his long run as anchor for the “Nightline” program on ABC. Koppel was actually born in England, to a Jewish family that had to flee from Germany. He emigrated with his family to the US when he was 13 years old. Koppel is great friends with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who was a frequent guest on his television show.

Ted Kennedy was the youngest boy in the family that included his older brothers Joseph Jr. (killed in action in WWII), John (assassinated) and Robert (assassinated). Ted Kennedy went into the US Senate in 1962 in a special election held after brother John became US President. He remained in the Senate until he passed away in 2009, making Ted the fourth-longest-serving US Senator in history.

10. Something always sold in mint condition? : TIC TAC
Tic Tacs aren’t American candy (as I always mistakenly believed). Tic Tacs are made by the Italian company Ferrero, and were introduced in 1969.

24. Seventh heaven : BLISS
In cosmology associated with some religious traditions, the universe is said to be made up of Seven Heavens. The highest of these is the “seventh heaven”.

25. West Indies native : CARIB
The Caribs are an American Indian people that live in the Lesser Antilles islands, part of the West Indies. The Caribbean Sea of course takes its name from the Carib people.

27. Old LPs and 45s : VINYL
The first vinyl records designed to play at 33 1/3 rpm were introduced by RCA Victor in 1931, but were discontinued due to quality problems. The first Long Play (LP) 33 1/3 rpm disc was introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, with RCA Victor following up with a 45 rpm “single” the following year, in 1949.

28. Quaint lodging hinted at by the outsides of 18-, 20-, 28-, 42-, 51- or 55-Across : B AND B
An intimate inn (in the US) is a bed & breakfast. A bed & breakfast back in Ireland is more basic, and is almost always much cheaper than a comparable hotel room.

29. Reddish/white horses : ROANS
A roan horse has an even mixture of white and colored hairs on the body with the head, lower legs, mane and tail having a more solid color.

30. Biscotti flavoring : ANISE
What we know in this country as “biscotti” is more properly called “biscotti di Prato”. It is a twice-baked, almond-flavored confection that originated in the Italian city of Prato. Modern versions of biscotti often contain anise or cinnamon in addition to the almond flavoring.

33. Boyfriends : BEAUS
“Beau” is the French word for “beautiful”, in the male sense.

37. Shenanigan : PRANK
I suppose one could be forgiven for thinking that “shenanigan” is an Irish term. Apparently the word is of uncertain derivation, coined in San Francisco and Sacramento, California in the mid-1800s.

44. Designer ___ Saint Laurent : YVES
Yves Saint-Laurent was a French fashion designer, actually born in Algeria. He started off working as an assistant to Christian Dior at the age of 17. Dior died just four years later, and as a very young man Saint-Laurent was named head of the House of Dior. However, in 1950 Saint-Laurent was conscripted into the French Army and ended up in a military hospital after suffering a mental breakdown from the hazing inflicted on him by his fellow soldiers. His treatment included electroshock therapy and administration of sedatives and psychoactive drugs. He was released from prison, managed to pull his life back together and started his own fashion house. A remarkable story …

47. The “D” of PRNDL : DRIVE
That would be Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive and Low.

51. Cheese popular with crackers : BRIE
Brie is a soft cheese, named after the French province of Brie where it originated.

52. Actor Gyllenhaal : JAKE
Jake Gyllenhaal’s most famous role has to be as co-star with Heath Ledger in “Brokeback Mountain”, but he has also had lead roles in big movies like “The Day After Tomorrow”, “Jarhead” and “Rendition”.

53. Crude group? : OPEC
The OPEC cartel (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) was formally established in 1960 and has been headquartered in Vienna since 1965. The US is actually the third largest oil producer in the world (after Russia and Saudi Arabia). One reason America isn’t in OPEC, even though we are a big producer, is that we import a lot more than we export. But you probably knew that already …